NorthEast Radio Watch 11/20/2023: Remembering Ken Squier

In this week’s issue… Vermont loses a broadcast legend – New rock in Albany – Beasley hits the “Playa” – Bell sells AMs

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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*Around the country, Ken Squier is being remembered – and rightly so – for his important role in motor sports. The NASCAR Hall of Famer founded the Motor Racing Network, persuaded CBS to begin covering the Daytona 500 in full in the 1970s, and became a familiar national voice behind the microphone for CBS, ABC and TNT for decades, calling auto racing, tennis, golf and the Winter Olympics.

But in his native VERMONT, he was so much more than that.

Kenley Dean Squier, who died Wednesday at 88, was a second-generation broadcaster in the Green Mountain State, born in 1935, four years after his father, Lloyd Squier, helped to put WDEV (550) on the air in Waterbury. (Lloyd Squier bought the station outright the same year Ken was born.)

Young Ken grew up behind the WDEV microphone, even as he was taking his family’s love of horse racing into the 20th century by building the Thunder Road auto racing track in nearby Barre in the 1960s.

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